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I HAVE A LV 50 MERC ON ISEULT
50/SLASH 50 /DUEL
SARACEN

NOT TO MANY MERCS THAT ARE SARRCEN BUT I HAVE REAL GOOD DAMAGE
UP TO U BUT I LIKE THAT RACE IF THAT HELPS ANY.

No saurcean can be slash, crush or thrust. The slash damage is calculated on strength only, so a saursarn (damn this spelling lol) usually won't hit as hard as a briton since they start out with less strength.

Thrust hit points are calculated with strenth and dex evenly, so this race usually will go with thrust, not slash. However, since this race has high dex naturally, your blocking rate would be better than a briton and maybe other abilities would be better too (although im not positive on this point).

To be sure on how dex affects your toon, do further research and the saurcean may be the way to go depending on what your trying to accomplish. Find out which abilities the merc has, and see how high dex will affect that ability. Same thing for strength. You may want high strength and dex may not matter so much. I haven't done a merc yet, so i don't know, sry.

To this point: My pally is a saucern, he blocks like a mother (cause the high dex helps in blocking). Since i wanted a defensive pally and didn't care so much how much damage i do, this is the race i went with in making my pally for the above reasons. Had I wanted an offensive pally, I wounldn't have chosen this race.

Edited, Thu Dec 23 12:24:31 2004 by stevenmeadows

I dont know why everyone thinks HO mercs are the best. My Highlander merc. hits harder then HO mercs i have dueled, and i hit faster...explain why HO is so great?

PS: Good friend Saracen Merc has/does occasionally 1 shot enemy tanks...both weapons land with crits, flurry, weapon procs, and reflex attack (was lvl 50)... HO overrated indeed only advantage is you dont need as much to cap strength and constitution.

HO or Highlander, make sure to add to quickness, one of the most important stats. I would do a HO wihtout adding any to str since everything has +str cap on it these days, I would go 15 quick and 10 con on a HO.

I currently play a Highlander, and 10-10-10 str-con-qui is a nice combo Zixle is right, with a few RA points into Aug Str, you are the str of a HO, but faster.

The thing about str based damage is it hits a point-of-dimishing-returns around 400, so whether you get to 400 via HO or Highlander, the focus shifts to how close you are to 250 quickness cap, and the Highlander starts with more quick. again the HO can add to quick with RA's, but they start lower and there are LESS +quick items than +str items it SEEMS to me these days.

If/when I reroll, I will do a short(rvr advantage) highlander with +10str +10con +10qui, and since Crush does not auto train I will startout crush all the way to 50(like I will fight, going to PL with the necto account the new toon to 50).

Just my thoughts as a day1 merc.

Scartissue of Palomides

Any race you choose can be good it depends on how good you are.

Saracen is best to go thrust as someone said above, but most mercs avoid that race b/c it forces you to concentrate on four stats instead of three. Your final template as a thrust saracen will need to have as much str/dex/quick and con in it as possible, whereas a HO/High/Briton slash/crush merc will only need to cap str/quick/con, allowing more focus on resists, HP's, skills and damage in final template.

Now dexterity does help a little bit in regards to blocking (if you have a shield, which no merc should imo), parrying (not very useful in RvR) and maybe evade, but the other stuff you'd be sacrificing is generally considered MUCH more important, so it is just easier to go with the three more common races and spec slash or crush.

Now I see this message was originated seven months ago, so hopefully you know all these answers already, but maybe they will help another noob to the game.

Edited, Jun 13th 2006 at 12:57pm EST by thuri